Competitive poker where players play poker games against one another has grown in popularity in recent years. One aspect of the popularity of competitive poker is poker tournaments. Poker tournaments are a type of tournament that allows players to participate in a poker game as part of the tournament. Players are often required to play the same game to ensure parity among the tournament. In some instances, players may be allowed to play different games and a mathematical factor is applied to the outcome to balance the results.
Often these poker tournaments take place at a venue, such as a casino, where all of the players physically gather together to participate. At the venue, the players are manually registered. Then, the progress of the tournament is manually monitored and status of various players is manually posted, such as chip totals. These types of tournaments can be multi-day events.
Another method of providing a poker tournament that is gaining in popularity is Internet-based poker tournaments. Internet based poker tournaments are organized and played utilizing home computers and web-browsers. These tournaments allow geographically disparate players to participate in poker tournaments without having to travel to a particular venue.
Besides tournaments, players may simple wish to play poker games, such as Texas hold'em, against other players. Most casinos offer poker areas and organize games where players can participate against one another in this manner. Also, players can play against one another in poker games in an on-line manner via a number of Internet based poker sites.
The importance of being able to read a player, such as determining whether they are bluffing or not, based-upon emotional and physical queues is a much more important factor in games where player's play each other in person versus games where player's are physically separate and are playing each other online in a virtual playing area. To some players, in particular casual or inexperienced players, playing in person, can be quite intimidating. Further, organized in-person play at a venue, such as a casino, can be both time consuming and costly because of the travel time/costs for the player and the labor and maintenance costs associated with maintaining a venue and organizing games born by the operator of the casino. As a result, lower betting limits may be associated with on-line poker games versus brick and mortar establishments. Thus, for these reasons, many poker players, especially casual or inexperienced players prefer network-based poker games.
One disadvantage of on-line poker is that in many locations it is illegal and there are legal limitations that make it difficult to transfer funds to and from such sites. Further, these sites are not regulated and their have been known instances of cheating including revealing players cards to another player or collusion among players. In addition, a player may not even be sure that they are actual playing against person. For instance, poker bots have been developed to participate in on-line poker games without the participation of an actual person. Further, some players may have access to betting or other analysis programs that give than an advantage over other players. These disadvantages discourage many players in participating in on-line poker. In view of the above it would be desirable to provide gaming apparatus and methods that overcome these disadvantages associated with on-line poker.